Getting burnt out?

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I'm currently a nursing student in my last rotation. :balloons: I'll be graduating in July. I'm currently torn between two areas that are at total opposite ends of the spectrum - NICU and psych. I know I would love to be in the NICU taking care of the sick babies, but psych is really my one true love. I just find it very interesting and I'd love the opportunity to work with mentally ill patients.

Currently I work as a PCA in the float pool at our really small local hospital. They have a mental health unit that I get sent to maybe 20% of the time and I always enjoy it down there. The staff is wonderful and overall I love the hospital, plus it's close to home. The rotation I'm in now is psych and I just KNEW it'd make me want to go in that direction more since it's the clinical I'd have just before graduating. Maybe that's a sign that I should do it? Heh, I don't know.

Most of the patients we get are usually just going through a depressive phase, or are suicidal. There's always a few really sick ones though, but the majority are not psychotic. I'm worried that I'd get burnt out 'babysitting' the very sick ones. I don't mean for that to sound bad, I couldn't think of a better way to put it. I know that as a PCA we've had geriatric patients that must stay confined to a chair or something for fear that they'd fall or some that go into other people's rooms thinking it's theirs. I know that as a PCA I get very frustrated with these patients because you have to keep an eye on them the entire shift when you have a lot of other things to do. Then again, possibly it's more of a PCA job to make sure they stay in the chair/don't wander into places they shouldn't be.

For all of you psych nurses - do you feel burned out at all? This is basically the only concern I have because I'm scared that if I want to leave psych to do something else then I'll have lost a lot of my med/surg skills. I know what the job entails and I love it...I just really don't want to burn out.

Any replies would be appreciated! Even if it's just 'I love my job!'. ;)

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One of the nifty things about nursing is that if you don't like one area you can change. Your licensure is as a generalist. I have noticed that I tend to stay in a position about 3 yrs unless I like it alot. That is just about until I'm really competent at it.

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Do I get burnt out? Sometimes. But it doesn't last. They talked alot about burnout way back in nursing school and what you need to do to avoid burnout. For me, the 12 hour shifts are the way to go. You then have plenty of days off to recoup and relax. For sure, the most burned out people in our system are the ones who work Mon-Fri. 2 days off isn't enough. I have worked at the same acute psych unit for 20 years next month, In that time I took a year leave of absence after 16 years to go and do some things I'd always wanted to do, like a ski season in New Zealand. Avoiding burn out in any job is done by treating yourself good and having a full and meaningful life away from work. I live on a ski hill which is only a 30 minute drive to work. ALthough many think I live so far away, I believe it is healthy in that it separates my work from my home. Not to mention that it is a very fun place to live. I forget that I have a job sometimes! I am fortunate in that I work with awesome colleagues, many of who have been here as long or longer than me. We are a very cohesive team and that too avoids burnout. In my job, it is the politics that get me down as opposed to direct pt. care. I have to stop at times and get refocused and not let those things get to me. We have Dr. issues but I believe that things will improve. I am here for the long haul. Burn out can happen in any nursing setting. If you truly love psych, then go for it!

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Specializes in Psych, Med/Surg, LTC.

Burn out happens in all area's. Go with what you love! If you get burnt out, change area's.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Geriatric, Behavioral Health.

One key to prevent burn out is to NOT having nursing as your only passion. Balance is key. Have many passions...if not, develop them. You are a nurse, but much more than that...do not forget this.

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Wonderful post margarita, some of the best advice I've ever read in relation to burnout, and Wolfie, so true about having other passions than nursing.

regards StuPer

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In truth I am more burnt out on how administration is making our job more & more difficult with endless, tedious policy & procedure. They care more about protocol than the actual care the patients recieve. Not to mention being expected to do the job of 3 RN's. I miss the days when we could actually spend time interacting with our patients instead of fighting with a computerized med administration system which is ineffectiv & computers which are always breaking down.

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TitaniaSidhe... I feel your burnout..... I cannot for the life of me understand how hospital administrators the world over are under the delusion that it is more cost effective to have a highly qualified nurse doing administrative tasks than a secretarial worker. Admittedly there are some tasks that need a clinician, but it seems that there has been some fool who after seeing a nurse working at a computer, thought.. ouuuu ... if we can get the nurses doing more of that we can do away with ward clerks etc... think of the cost savings.... doh!!

My colleagues in community mental health services in this small area alone spend the equivalent of 2 fulltime staff just doing statistics for their daily activities... and when services are so stretched.. thats just criminal.

regards StuPer

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TitaniaSidhe... I feel your burnout..... I cannot for the life of me understand how hospital administrators the world over are under the delusion that it is more cost effective to have a highly qualified nurse doing administrative tasks than a secretarial worker. Admittedly there are some tasks that need a clinician, but it seems that there has been some fool who after seeing a nurse working at a computer, thought.. ouuuu ... if we can get the nurses doing more of that we can do away with ward clerks etc... think of the cost savings.... doh!!

My colleagues in community mental health services in this small area alone spend the equivalent of 2 fulltime staff just doing statistics for their daily activities... and when services are so stretched.. thats just criminal.

regards StuPer

Time to get your union involved. No Union? Get one!

Seriously, Nurses need collective bargining power. Not just to protect ourselves but to protect our patients. Capitalism is an amoral system. The only value built in to it is monetary. If you want it to be moral and ethical and have humanistic values you have to force it to have them.

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I agree with your post Charlie, and would love to see Nurses acting together for the the better of their profession and their patients. Unfortunately in my experience we as a profession seem to spend more time working against each other than together. As for union power, well again, I often see nurses finally coming to the point of strike action, only to find half their colleagues will not strike out of a misguided Florence Nightingale belief that they need to stay by the patients bedside.

I beleive we are our own worst enemies when it comes to pay/conditions, nurses have a massive ammount of power and leverage, if they are simply willing to walk off the job. In the 2 countries I know of where EVERY nurse walked out of hospital (Ireland and Sweden I think) both got what they were asking for within 24hrs, people were dying and the public accepted that it was the fault of the government that nurses were striking, no politician spin their way out of that.

regards StuPer

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I beleive we are our own worst enemies when it comes to pay/conditions, nurses have a massive ammount of power and leverage, if they are simply willing to walk off the job.

StuPer

100% agree ! Nurse should look at the power that teachers have.

They really get what they want for pay by being cohesive.

Nurses here in Ma will finally have the same recognition as

teachers in the school setting.

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Re Union.

My work place is unionized. Initally we organized under a national teachers union but our local felt that we were not ideally represented by them. So we switched to United Nurses and Allied Professionals.http://www.unap.org/node/1308 They are a regional union centered in Rhode Island, and have been excellant. They represent both the nurses teachers, therapists testers and social workers in a professional level local but also the mental health workers, clerks and support personel in a non professional local.

No Union is magic of course, collective bargining is work and requires vigorus worker participation. But it can give us the leverage to help form policy regarding the safe care of our pts. Also it is a structure around which our input into the political process can be crystalized.

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